What is Phishing and What Can it Do?

The "fishing" people need to care about in the 21stsigning into such as Facebook, but will really be a
century isn't the fishing that happens with a rod andmirror site. The mirror sites requires you to login
some worms for bait. Phishing is a malicious securityseveral times, gaining your account information.
threat that endangers computer users around thePhishing is prevalent among social networking
world. Phishing costs the United States almost a billionwebsites and financial services. The scam is popular
dollars annually. From the novice computer users towith sites like eBay and Amazon where financial gains
the most tech savvy, phishing is tricky and requires acan be made.
well-trained eye to understand and catch.Phishing is difficult to spot because scammers go to
Phishing occurs when a person uses illegal computerextra lengths to pretend to be someone they are
tricks to obtain sensitive information. This informationnot. The fake site's text will often be borrowed from
includes account names, password, home addresses,the actual sites.
email address, pin numbers, social security numbers,Ways to detect phishing
credit card number and general contact information.Site links will give away the site more often than not.
The origin of "phishing" shares a link with fishing.Though many phishing attempts rely on misspelled
Attackers use a variety of methods randomlyaddresses, a person with a keen eye for spelling can
distributed to many people with a commonfind the deceptive site by comparing the address to
connection. The phishing attacks are fishing becausean actual site. Still certain malware can cover up the
they are cast to a large pool of people and only aaddress bar, masking that a browser is going to a
few will take the bait. The bait like a fake lure is afraudulent site.
deceptive purpose masked as a real and genuineSearch the actual place you want to go in a major
opportunity. The essence of phishing is something orsearch engine such as Bing or Google. Then link to
someone pretended to be something they are not.the site from there. Links in emails should not be
The ways phishing occurstrusted. The address in the email could appear
Emailaccurate, but direct to a hidden address.
People will send out mass emails to a large pool ofEnable all security settings in your browser.
people. The emails promise an opportunity that is notUse spam filters to hide phishing emails in junk mail
real. The email may have the banner of Yahoosince most phishing emails are mass emails, a form of
services, but will instead be from a person who wentspam.
through detailed lengths to pull off the sham. TheseBeing aware of phishing is essential to stopping one
fake emails will also appear to be from places such asof the internet's most threatening and fastest
a bank. When the scam works, valuable financialgrowing crime waves. Phishing contributes to high
information is given to the scammer.incidences of identity theft, bank fraud, wire fraud
Fake or spoofed websiteand account theft.
The website will look like the site you're used to